It was a small town, cold and quiet. Hard by the Canadian border. The Atlantic yards away, and on most nights she could hear the surf from her parent's house. She grew up on Summer Street, but growing up there -- just the thought of summer was often an unbearable idea. In December, when the snow came fast, summer was a memory hard to find. Something to hold on to when night came. Something far away and warm, something to reach out to when nights got too cold. Like a promise, broken, summer was something far away and out of reach.
She'd run away once, almost thirty years ago, right after she got out of high school. She ran to Boston, and Boston ran all over her. She left after a year, not quite a year, really, and she ended up in New London, fell in with a sailor, a submariner. He left, was gone for six months, came home moody and dark and they split up after that. She moved up the coast to Mystic for a while, worked at the Seaport Museum that next winter, days, anyway. She worked the counter at Mystic Pizza too, at night, and she hoped men would think she looked like one of those actresses from the movie. Didn't work out that way, but she met a guy with a boat and for a while she thought they had something going. That didn't work out, either, and she settled in Newport, Rhode Island, working for a lawyer. Secretarial work, for the most part. The lawyer, a girl from Boston, tried to get her to go back to school -- maybe because the girl made the mistake of thinking she had ambitions.
But she didn't. Not really. Her needs were far simpler and, like memories of summer, always just out of reach.
She stayed in Newport, however, for fifteen years, and never missed a day or work. She and the lawyer became close, then closer than close, and she was comfortable for a while, but uneasy. Like she'd found a false Spring and was trapped in a season of discontent. Then one September morning her mother called.
"Your father's dying," her mother said, "and you need to come home, say goodbye."
She hopped a bus the next morning, told her employer -- her employer! -- that she'd call when she knew more, yet somehow both knew this was the end of their road.
The bus ran through Boston on it's way up to Portland, and she looked at the city like maybe she'd visited once, but the memories were painful and she turned away from them. She changed buses in Portland, at the little train station, got on the bus that would take her all the way down east, to Lubec, and she sat by a window and watched the coast slip by through veils of blazing trees. In almost twenty years nothing much had changed, yet somehow that bothered her. A part of her was happy to see so little change, it was almost a comfort, yet the closer she got to home the more she wondered what a lack of change really meant. For her.
Trees were turning brilliantly up north, and when she got off the bus she smelled smokey fireplaces in the distance. She walked to her parent's house and let herself in, but when she called out she realized the place was empty. She carried her little bag upstairs, put her clothes in the same little closet she'd left behind so many years ago, and she turned, looked around the little room where she'd spent so many years. So many little years. Inconsequential years, she thought. Little, like her life. Almost empty, but for a few broken dreams back there, down that dusty road.
She stood by her mother's side while her father passed, and she stood by her mother's side when his body was lowered into the ground, and when she went into her mother's bedroom later that evening to check on her -- she had gone too. Died of a broken heart, a neighbor said.
They'd left her everything, of course. The house and enough money to fix the plumbing and replace the roof, and she took a job at a restaurant down by the water to make ends meet. It was a new place, had just opened a month before, and it catered to the summer crowd. It was called the Pink Water Café -- because of the sunsets visible from windows out back that looked over the river towards Eastport.
She got along well enough with the owners, two boys from New York City who'd run away in search of true love and fresh lobster, and time slipped by, slowly, like the first snows of autumn.
+++++
It was a June morning, May still just a day or so gone. Still a snap in the air, no boats on the river yet, no sailors from Boston or New York. Didn't matter, they started summer hours on June first, and that was that. She took out some chalk and began putting the day's specials on the board: fresh poached salmon Hollandaise with orzo and field greens, a tarragon lobster bisque, and, of course, their famous lobster and butternut squash tortellini. And for dessert, a blueberry crisp fresh out of the oven, with mountains of fresh churned vanilla bean ice cream on top.
She put prices by each item and had just placed the blackboard on an easel by the door when he walked by.
Old man, tall. White hair, and not much left on top, and he was wearing khaki shorts and a navy blue windbreaker, but he was walking a dog, black and white and tan, with no leash. Big dog, yet not quite, and the pup was what caught her eye. Gorgeous. Like a movie star reincarnated and now here he was, ready for his next role. She watched them walk down the street and disappear into the hardware store and she sighed.
A young couple came in and she seated them, gave them menus and she saw the dog again, then the man -- and he stopped by the door, read the menu through the glass then poked his head in the door, and the little bell twinkled his arrival.
"Y'all allow dogs?" he asked her.
"Is he trained?" she replied.
"When he feel like it, yes."
She smiled, shrugged. "If he acts up, he's out of here."
He smiled too. "Well, smells too good to pass up. How 'bout that table in the corner?"
"It's all yours. What's his name?"
"Depends. If he's being good I call him Jimmy."
"And when he's not?"
"Fudge butt."
"How old is he?"
"Not quite a year. Still filling out."
"A Springer?"
"That's right. When he wants to be, anyway."
"They're bird dogs, aren't they?"
"Could be. He likes looking at birds, so I guess that counts for something."
She handed him a menu, pointed out the specials.
"What's good?"
"The bisque is crazy good, but really, my favorite thing is the lamb burger. Swiss, steamed spinach and a garlic aioli."
"Whoa...if I twist your arm, could I get a cup of bisque and that burger?"
"As long as you don't twist too hard, sure. Anything to drink?"
"What do you recommend?"
"Redcurrant iced-tea. Brewed fresh this morning."
"Now that sounds good."
She nodded, walked to the kitchen and handed off the order, then went to take care of the young couple, coming back a few minutes later with his tea.
"You passing through?" she asked.
And he shook his head. "Moving in."
"Oh, a summer place?"
"Nope. Full time. Retired recently, wanted to be up here, away from it all."
She laughed. "Well, you'll be away from it all, alright." She knelt and scratched behind Jimmy's ears and he sighed, his stumpy tail started ticking like a metronome. "So, is it just you and the dog?"
"Yup."
"So, let me see if I have this right. You moved up here, alone, to live in the most lonely town in the universe?"
"I've got Jimmy," he said, but he looked at the girl now, maybe for the first time, and he took her in, sized her up in an instant. "Sometimes quiet is a good thing," he said, looking into her eyes.
And she almost fell over backwards -- from the force she felt in his eyes. So blue, like cobalt, but she'd never felt such intensity before -- like his eyes were x-rays, maybe, designed to probe the soul. She stood, wiped her hands on her apron...
And he looked her over now, continued his ritual inventory. Tall, red hair tucked in a bun, green eyes, milk-white complexion with buckets of freckles spilled everywhere. Evasive eyes, two fingernails broken, or chewed. Could have been a stunner once, but something like low self-esteem got her -- and hard, probably in high school. No wedding band. Maybe fifty. He didn't think marriage was a good fit for her -- probably too unfocused, too ready to take flight for that kind of commitment. Ten years ago he might have been interested in her, but not now.
"How's the tea," she asked.
"You know? Not bad...like the mint."
